Response of the week…

I stated earlier this week I received an email from a church where I had submitted my resume for possible consideration for a pastoral staff position.

The response that I received was quite interesting:

‘After prayerfully looking at your resume, it is the conclusion of the Search Team that we would not be a good match.’

Now for the questions that I had after I read this response:

How did you determine that we would not be a good match merely based on my resume?

Did I attend a college or seminary that you did not approve of?

Did I have too many degrees or not enough?

Were you put off because most of my experiences are based out of many years of service within three different local churches from 1987 through the present time?

Were you put off that my only formal pastoral experience was a one year internship while in seminary?

Were you put off that my full time ministry experience (paid) was not in a local church but a para-church organization?

Am I too old or not old enough?

I could probably come up with more possible questions/objections, but I hit the obvious ones that could be raised. You see, I will never know the answers to these questions, because the church thought that they were helping me by emailing that short response to me. In the secular arena, when you are declined for a job or position, you are never told why because most companies are afraid that if they were to disclose the real reasons why you were not hired that they would open themselves up to a lawsuit or expose the fact that they could be guilty of breaking the law. This is a different situation, we are dealing with brothers and sisters in Christ and if our true desire is to live for the glory of God, then wouldn’t it be a kind thing to decline someone, but also let them know where they fell short so that they would not perpetuate the same mistake when applying for the next ministry opportunity.

Unfortunately, we fail in this area and we resort back to the same tactics that the secular world does when they hire people.